


El mar azúl

by Leontocephalina



Series: The Golden Section [2]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Animalistic, Banter, Devil Trigger - Freeform, Dirty Talk, Domesticity, Flashbacks, Implied Torture, Incest, M/M, Moaning Non-Stop During Sex Because Your Partner Has A Shitty Sense of Humor, POV Alternating, PTSD, Post-DMCV, implied rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27261424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leontocephalina/pseuds/Leontocephalina
Summary: DV talk tea, poetry, sex, and what's for dinner. All from the comfort of their living room!
Relationships: Dante/Vergil (Devil May Cry)
Series: The Golden Section [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1837024
Comments: 12
Kudos: 34





	El mar azúl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ardens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardens/gifts).



> This fic outgrew its sensible lil' shell, but it started as a drabble for Evie who asked what became of Dante's drum set between DMC4 and DMCV. (Hmm...!)
> 
> The rating will change to reflect the tagged content, and I apologize in advance for the wait.
> 
> (The title is "El mar azúl" but "Los cojones azules" might be more appropriate, lol.)
> 
> **References**
> 
> [Yves Montand - Les feuilles mortes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Na0VbDT9BI)  
> ["One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49236/one-hundred-love-sonnets-xvii) (sorry, Pablo)  
> [Rupa and the April Fishes - Neruda](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD5yxWm17mI)  
> ["A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44131/a-valediction-forbidding-mourning) (sorry, Donney)

On Tuesday and Thursday evenings, like a regular Sherlock Holmes, Vergil practices violin in the refurnished study. The door is closed in case of emergency calls, but Dante always creeps to the sofa to listen. Often, the playing is frenetic. If after an hour it remains so, he shuffles to the kitchen to make the fancy tea or pour the dry red wine his brother likes. He can do liquids that aren't water or broth or blood, now, and Dante has been anxiously scanning the "Soups" chapter of his half-cursed cookbook for reference. Despite its gruesome contents, the tome is actually quite grandmotherly. Kitschy flourishes mark each hand-lettered header and page number.  
  
Today the tome's soul manifests as a common butterfly, in signature spring watercolors. He spots it fluttering among the description for "ornamental" biscuits, and squints at the ingredients list. ... _Nah. Too much Latin._ It responds in the same swooping, unhurried cursive it always does when he asks: _Is it time yet?  
  
_ _Your nose knows, dear!_ The exclamation point tugs itself into a neat little heart.  
  
Dante sighs. _No, I mean is **he** ready. For, you know. _He rubs the gummy page between his calluses. _...Soup.  
  
_ _Oh, your heart knows that one._ The butterfly lights upon the leafy serif of an introductory F.  
  
He really does sigh a lot these days. _Between you and me, my heart's about as smart as my_ \--  
  
"The water's boiling."  
  
Dante's skeleton about exits his body, and he clings to the spice cabinet for support. Karma recalls his mother on the ladder, rocked by her dust-devil sons pelting through the whole house, and when Dante hops off the counter to blessed, level ground he finds his brother smirking at him-- with interest. _Shit._ This is the second time Vergil's caught him clucking around up there, and he really doesn't want his fairy godmother dishing. _Gonna have to find another place for you, granny._ _  
  
_"Uh, yeah?" Dante snarks; hip jut, palms raised. "Then turn the fire off."  
  
Vergil-- _beams_ , and Dante's heart upends itself all over again. "You do seem like you would benefit from a connoisseur's instruction."  
  
"What, to boil water?"  
  
The pot boils over. Vergil winds into Dante's space and twists the stove's discolored dial with a short _snikt_. Steam splutters, clapping the lid. _Heat and proximity.  
  
_ "Okay sensei," Dante sketches a bow to disguise his retreat, "be my guest."  
  
"I am that. So," Vergil smirks, "if you would fetch me your cooking thermometer."  
  
"I don't even have a people thermometer."  
  
"A practicality, I'm sure." Vergil's smiling about it-- _very_ sure--as he opens a little ceramic jar, doles a generous scoop of tea into the steeper, and sets it in one of Dante's few good mugs. It's undecorated but also unstained. Some of the stuff he used to drink wasn't much better than peroxide, but others left a mark.  
  
" _Gyokuro_ is a green tea cultivated in the shade, often beneath a hanging tarp," Vergil explains. "The method reduces photosynthesis and increases both chlorophyll--thus the name, 'jade dew'--and theanine, the amino acid which grants it sweetness and a fuller body." He pinches the pads of one glove, removes it, then reaches to pour the pot. "Rather than pick the leaves, the farmer gently pulls them to preserve their tenderness."  
  
Water seethes into the mug, still too hot, and he twirls the thimbly steeper to better winnow and bleed the green.  
  
"Temperature determines flavor."  
  
"...So is it sweeter, hot?"  
  
Vergil hums, still smiling so surely; angling his chin up and to the side. "What do you think?"  
  
But Dante's not really thinking about the tea or even about doubling his entendre, because that flex drags his brother's throat out from beneath his high collar. The sight, though stark and compelling, wouldn't normally _derail_ him, but-- today, there's a bruise. A _hickey._ An honest-to-god, gorgeous-sucked plum spanning from jawline to jugular. He stops thinking about anything and everything but that, and even then "thinking" is a very charitable word.  
  
"Uh," he says.  
  
"Hm." Vergil looks amused but-- grateful. _The other side of spite._ It looks good on him. He dunks the steeper twice and plates it. "See for yourself?" And then he leans over Dante to take the wine glass instead--aerated in advance and parked in a corner--and exits to the foyer.  
  
"Oh." Vergil turns. Retrieves his glove from the countertop. "Thank you for the wine. I like this Sauvignon." A peck on the cheek--another flash of his bruise--before he strides out again, pretty as you please.  
  
Dante's devil whines, scandalized.  
  
 _Yeah_ , Dante thinks, _you're telling me.  
  
_ He decides, right now, that he really needs a drink, right--  
  
 _Right. The wine.  
  
_ (The wine ruddying his brother's full mouth; the bruise rippling blue; the taste so well savored and so-- so startling to savor, as it had been for them both; for Vergil to reexperience the basic pleasures of the senses, and for Dante to see it happening--)  
  
He throws back the nearest thing and immediately crumples, hacking with the tannic scour of that goddamn overpriced grass-water.  
  
"How," Dante croaks back bitter tears, "do you drink this stuff?"  
  
Vergil laughs, loudly, from the other room.  
  
"At least whiskey burns _decent_!"  
  


* * *

  
Sometimes after practice, they lie on the couch and recite their favorite poems. This is their game: once in French, once in Spanish. And no peeking at the text, if you're the echo.  
  
As a child, Dante yawned at Blake and Shelley. He much preferred snickering at Vergil's chronically inert R's. _Now **that's** poetry,_ he'd jibe-- and always got a good, bruising, jab for his trouble. Vergil's Latin and French were princely and fine; Dante's Spanish and Italian trilly and tactile. Long, lean years bared their beauty down to bone, but Vergil is reclaiming these talents, too, and Dante his own enthusiasm for other languages.  
  
He can still tease some, sure, but with Vergil's back to Dante's front, it's impossible to defend as anything but pigtail-pulling.  
  
"Neruda in French?" Vergil tuts, mostly at the book's poor condition. Its spine is broken, and the cover photo of a poppy is as wrinkly as soap-skin. "Latin would be more accommodating."  
  
"Oh," Dante grins, digging his chin into the join between his brother's neck and shoulder. He pulls Vergil with him to snuggle further into the punched-up pillows, relishing the warm and easy arc of their bodies. "Y'think so, _Wirgle_?"  
  
Even if he can't roll his R's, Dante thinks, his eye-rolling's got to be proof of potential. _Or at least good practice.  
  
_ "Perhaps Pig Latin would suit you better, _Antday_."  
  
Dante snorts. "Well we're not in a church, so the masses aren't asking."  
  
"No." Vergil links their mismatched hands over his abdomen. "You're right. Neruda would appreciate the French."  
  
" _I_ appreciate the French."  
  
" _Je sais_." Vergil lifts Dante's hand to his lips and presses the rest into his knuckles. " _Vous êtes une lecture très facile._ "  
  
"Guilty as charged," Dante chuckles, riled and squirming.  
  
" _Les yeux_ ," Vergil purrs, working himself back, " ** _ferm_** _és_."  
  
"Have mercy on an old man," Dante laughs. " _S'il vous plaît._ I can't help it."  
  
"I know." Vergil smirks, thumbing the inner skin of his wrist. "What would you like to read, then?"  
  
"I'm good with, uh, whatever."  
  
Of course Dante has favorites, but he's more interested in Vergil's. The lamplight emphasizes the severity of his profile, and Dante thinks how difficult it is to separate joy from misery, sometimes, in total solitude. Playing by yourself wasn't fun for very long, and he thinks studying might be similar. It's mostly a trick of the light, but he can't help feeling tender toward the bruises beneath his brother's blue eyes. He watches him read before Vergil speaks in an unhurried and ambling hum, just audible over the passing pages.  
  
"When we were young, I refused to read Neruda."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Most of humanity's modern romantics, in fact."  
  
"Why? Devils got forked tongues, so that made 'em better bards than old Shakespeare?"  
  
Vergil pauses, scanning a sonnet. "Neither Shakespeare nor the devil bound themselves in such explicit terms."  
  
"Yeah. Couldn't just call a spade a spade, could they?"  
  
"Not in so many words."  
  
"What changed? I get it, though. Didn't much care for the English greats, either, until you--" Dante's train of thought jumps its tracks and goes whistling off over a cliff.  
  
Vergil continues, as if Dante's not chewing his own boot to bits behind him. "I decided to stop and smell the roses." He turns the next page. "This will do."  
  
Dante shuts his eyes then beams, blindingly, under Vergil's scrutiny.  
  
"...Don't cheat."  
  
"I'm a man of my word."  
  
"Yes, that is daily apparent in many arenas."  
  
Dante leans in close and _tongues_ his dirtiest R into Vergil's ear.  
  
Vergil jumps, shouldering him. "Behave."  
  
"Ow," Dante laughs. "Alright." He settles himself into an expectant stillness, stretchy and sweet. _Like good mozzarella._ It was one thing to wait in confidence--the clock, the date; the calendrical sum assured--and another to idle in space, echoing infinitely without. "Read on, then."  
  
It had almost killed him to hear, one stormy afternoon, Vergil humming "Les feuilles mortes," each note falling like the rain, until memory served him the last few lines. It had been one of their mother's favorites, but Dante didn't trust himself to speak, then, and least of all about her.  
  
Now, Vergil unwinds the tender-green meaning of a sonnet Dante didn't forget, exactly, but feels he has never heard before. _The same arbor in a different season._ The French translation is at once heavier and more liquid than the original, its vowels closed and secret as wishing coins.  
  
"Last couplet again," Dante says, quietly, when it's done.  
  
His twin breathes, chest rising under Dante's hands, and grants the request. Though his body's eyes are closed, it feels as if another pair--someplace stranger, paler, softer--slips shut, too, to savor a rare shade. The little bird inside him dusts itself clean before settling into its dream-nest.  
  
Vergil cards his fingers through Dante's hair. "Cat got your tongue?"  
  
Dante clears his throat. "Something like that. Gimme a sec."  
  
He imagines the French phrases with luminous tails like lures, but he'll be the one catching them in this scenario; twining them altogether beneath a brighter moon. There's _una rosa de sal_ and _la sombra y la alma_ ; the corner pieces, _en si misma_ and _en mi cuerpo_ , then the ends, _tan cerca...tan cerca_.  
  
When Dante blinks back home, he's only a little embarrassed to see his recitation was nearly perfect, even after all these years.  
  
"The carnations remind me of you," Vergil says. " _Que propagan el fuego._ "  
  
Dante stills. The little bird inside seems to twitter, inadvisably, in its sleep.  
  
"It is better in Spanish," Vergil concedes, wry. "Let's--"  
  
"--The second stanza," Dante rallies, because this must be said. "I always-- of you. I always thought of you."  
  
And because, if he can't cuddle on some shitty stolen sofa and truly not give a damn that it's shitty; if he can't get really and expensively drunk, and serenade his lover with some dead genius's cheat-codes, well--  
  
 _Well, then what was even the fucking point?  
  
_ " _¿Un bis?_ " Dante whispers, invigorated, against his throat; against the lurid, hidden rub of the violin. The spot bobs against his nose, and Dante rests his head there. Once more, he takes the stanza's moon-flowers and tucks them behind his brother's ear. _For love,_ he thinks--a little deviation all his own-- _you live lightly in my body._ And then, he can't help it-- he peeks.  
  
Vergil is at rest and-- smiling, almost sadly. His blush is a bit bronzy in the bad light and his eyes, when they open to catch Dante, are much blacker than before. They narrow. "Cheat."  
  
"Y'know," Dante drawls, "my hair used to be a lot thicker. Made napping a cinch. By the time anyone thought to check in, see if I was awake?" He shrugs. "I'd be playing possum. Stank enough and, honestly, drunk often enough, to prove I was dead to the world. So, Verge." He smirks, because he knows it makes him look like a real bastard. "What's your proof? Think you got a case, here?"  
  
"Dante," Vergil sighs. "Only the drunkard is convinced by his lie."  
  
Dante bites his lip. "Well it's a good thing we're both drinking, huh?"  
  
Vergil laughs. "Well. _Bottoms up_." And then he turns out his collar to give him, as they say, just enough rope to hang himself.  
  
Dante's hips-- _Christ_ \--don't lie. When Vergil grinds down to really drive his point home, he moans, tragically. "Being the big spoon is-- unfair."  
  
Vergil smirks. " _Est-ce trop pour vous?_ **_Bon_** _monsieur?_ "  
  
"Holy shit," Dante wheezes, delighted and a little horrified by the suggested imagery. "Cut that out. I still want to--"  
  
"Oh, _you_ still want to _read_? How precious."  
  
Then they're both laughing and tussling like-- well, _almost_ like they did as children, but something in Dante clamors and objects: it wants more-- more talk or, shit, even outright _rejection_ , if that made it-- made it all last longer. Made his brother speak and be heard--be _understood_ \--well enough to want to stay.  
  
His lusts sideswipe his longings, and suddenly Dante's not only struggling with his boner but a rising and irrational panic. His limbs lock around Vergil and, when Vergil twists to break his hold, he-- he _yelps_.  
  
Vergil tenses. He registers the present energy as frantic--no longer playful--before he very deliberately submits.  
  
Their devils mirror this ritual, with Dante's red brute keening and headbutting until Vergil's sits, chuffing, and allows its every scale to be preened and polished to brilliance. It was no real hardship, to be so well loved, but its twin could exhaust itself if not properly appreciated. Vergil's devil had, ironically, not been particularly bold or even persuasive in their early adolescence. And then, for so long after that, it was only cold stone.  
  
Though Dante's stubble rashes awfully against his bruise, Vergil still turns to give him better access. He can feel Dante's heartbeat thumping him between the shoulders, like he'd thumped his bunk as a child. He breathes in steadying cycles as Dante marks and catalogs his body, willing both himself and his brother beyond the unhappy mixture of fear and arousal. This is neither unfamiliar nor an inconvenience; he, too, has suffered the same spell, trembling over or under him. It's only phantom pain; the chance to comfort and be comforted.  
  
"Sorry," Dante mumbles, when the episode passes.  
  
Vergil takes his hand and kisses lingeringly over the scar, then over his knuckles. The hairs on Dante's arms rise, tickling him. "Your hands," he sighs, "smell like pizza."  
  
Dante snorts and Vergil continues. "Do you remember when I visited you to retrieve Mother's books?"  
  
He allows a moment for memory: the stained walls with disembodied women, the lingering stink of processed cheese and gasoline; the cracks, the holes, the pests in broken appliances.  
  
"I was eager to endear myself to you again, though I knew it was foolish after--"  
  
"Yeah," Dante says. "I remember. You could've gone down on one knee and it wouldn't've been enough. Not until I had you under me. Like, six feet under." He swallows. "...Careful what you wish for, I guess."  
  
Vergil turns over his palm and scratches lightly over the scar.  
  
Dante shivers, hard, and grunts. "I should've just-- let you have them, but I"--he buries his head against his throat, vibrant and hushed--"I wanted you to take them from me."  
  
Vergil knows. He knew. But this naked admission elevates both past and present. His cock livens again under discreet tailoring, and his response is only a little dreadful with its lustier meaning. "I was prepared to make you a very generous offer."  
  
"Oh," Dante grins, recalling the exact evening, now. "No, no-- it was fucking perfect. You couldn't have set yourself up better. I wasn't even paying attention to the numbers. I just remember saying, 'Sounds like you've got a point. Elaborate on that,' and then you said, ' _Thank_ you' and started up again, so I went to town on that old drum set and didn't catch the rest."  
  
Vergil sighs. "And you never will. I was so furious with you it stupefied me. The rest is simply your racket. What became of it?"  
  
Dante snickers.  
  
"The drum kit," Vergil clarifies.  
  
"Oh," Dante says. "Junked it. Lady blew a hole through the bass and two of the toms. Said I could consider it paid interest." He coughs. "But it's quiet, right? Can take cat naps whenever, wherever. Don't have to hop over the set to get to the couch and read. Or walk into it in the middle of the night." He fidgets. "I played the guitar more, anyway."  
  
"It is quiet," Vergil agrees. He stretches, and Dante sheepishly relaxes to permit the movement. "Especially on Tuesdays and Thursdays." He decides not to mention how often he's quietly reconnected the landline the following Wednesdays and Fridays, covering the morning shift while Dante sleeps in.  
  
Vergil's right arm is pinned, somehow, under the cushions and the pulpy lump of what is likely Neruda's finest. He inventories the space further: several rather alarmingly evolved dust bunnies, old hair entangled with even older crumbs, and--  
  
"I seem to have found a bill. Overdue?"  
  
"Uh--"  
  
"Or perhaps a wrapper."  
  
"Honestly, neither'd surprise me. Patty used to drop by the weekend after Valentine's Day with a jumbo box of chocolate truffles. _Max_ discounts. We'd binge the whole thing watching _Pride and Prejudice_." Dante pats the seat's backing affectionately. "Quality leather." He chuckles. "Cured by tears and teen spirit."  
  
" _Pride and Prejudice_ ends rather well, I thought."  
  
"Yeah, but that means something a little different to the kid whose one-and-only forgets to deliver her a dozen roses. She said the happy endings were"--Vergil preempts his brother's falsetto with a cringe--"'the cruelest and therefore the best medicine, because a man like that does not exist and will never exist!'" Dante grins. "How about it? You wanna dig out the ascot and pop outta next year's cake, Mr. Darcy? She'll pay you a real--"  
  
Vergil squeezes his knee and Dante squawks. He recovers his benumbed arm, the bill--dated a sweet sixteen years ago, _This is your third and final notice_ \--and Señor Neruda.  
  
Another note falls out of the book, like an old feather. It's thin and cheaply made, but Vergil places its value quite a bit higher by its contents-- and the hitch in Dante's breath, when he unfolds it.  
  
"Music?" Vergil wonders at the penciled process: the welts of eraser smudges, the clef smeared onto its staff, the notes hobbled above Neruda's humble but hallowed ode. He's disarmed by the discovery and lets it stand for itself, so to speak. "You wrote this."  
  
Before he can even give him an out, Dante burrows close to kiss his neck. "Lemme, uh--" He exhales, shakily, then smiles. "Lemme play it for you."  
  
On the reading table, burnished by lamplight, sit two glasses of red wine and a mug of cold-brewed tea. Dante has forgotten the coasters again, but Vergil dismisses his own fond scold for these more profound affirmations of love: the various and vitally liquid refreshments, the quiet evenings, the poems and Dante's tribute-- trib _utes_ , actually; he realizes belatedly that Dante's worst kept books are also his best loved ones, and many of them Vergil's favorites.  
  
Certain and familiar titles had seemed to him oddly overstuffed, crowding their neighbors off the shelves, but he hadn't thought this worthy of more than an approving nod upon his arrival.  
  
"You've been writing songs," Vergil mutters, horrified to feel his face heat. "From the-- the books I like." He covers his eyes with one hand. "And I only congratulated you on your 'matured taste.' How asinine."  
  
"Hey, don't feel too bad. It was still-- wait." Dante sounds delighted, but Vergil isn't as dismayed by this as he expected. "Are you _blushing_?"  
  
"Stones in glasses houses-- so are you."  
  
"You're not even looking!"  
  
"There's no need." Vergil's own baiting smile trips him into nostalgia. He predicts Dante will escalate this exchange, vividly remembering their childhood squabbles, but misjudges his little brother's method by several decades.  
  
"No need, huh."  
  
Dante says it all on a breath, leaden with the sleepy tiger-tension of combat. But it is as much a seduction, and Vergil allows his body to revel in the velvety tangle of possibilities. Sex with Dante was-- almost too good. Submission awarded such an awful pleasure he would never have indulged--neither Dante nor himself--in their youth.  
  
Even now, laid across him, the prospect is tempting; because when he is made weak with bliss, Dante's terrible strength reassures instead of challenging him. He believes it is also good for-- _to_ Dante; to be kept still, be clutched tight, be worshiped until the same resplendent image aligns between them.  
  
Unless, Vergil sighs, Dante slips a "daddy" into his design, to laugh or lie about later _._ Undoing decades of _Playboy_ conditioning was no mean feat, but he's powerfully motivated to resist it-- even if, in the end, he goes down with the whole rotten ship. Because for so long, even in the Underworld after Urizen, Vergil had preferred the civil distance between them.  
  
 _Finally_ , he'd half-teased, _you've learned some restraint. And whom should I thank?  
  
_ But it was not in fact commendable--not some virtuous, seasonal fast; but the long famine--and Vergil quickly grew to see his death was an at-least significant factor.  
  
 _I assumed you would recover perfectly well in my absence, as you always have_ , he'd said, with a breeziness that had been easier to affect atop Temen-ni-gru.  
  
And although it was not a lie, he had confessed it dishonestly; wanting to know if Dante had suffered, too, and when Vergil might begin to-- well, first and foremost, to know exactly where he stood.  
  
How strange to be so well matched, in purpose and in skill, and not know his ally's mind. How maddening to be pursued by whom he sought--and who once sought him in kind, so brashly and so beautifully--only to observe him, now, at arm's length.  
  
 _How humiliating.  
  
_ Again and again, Dante ignored Vergil's buried lede with a rake's shrug and a trick-smile, but the worst change was in his eyes: dull and suspicious, they seemed cured of all curiosity. Vergil ached for how well his gaze once mirrored their own mirror-souls-- better even than Yamato, newly honed, or Rebellion after the living blade's monthly shed. Disturbed but intrigued by the stranger who wore his favorite scent, Vergil pushed perhaps too soon:  
  
 _Did you marry, then, as you wished?  
  
_ The courtship that followed brought even his devil to its wits' end-- and the sort of undignified sulk he'd thought beyond it. It troubled him to inhabit this flipped dynamic, in which he stumbled after his brother, now, in his brother's hoofish boots. But it appealed to his sense of poetry as well, so that even the worst of it--namely, that his old finesses should seem so inept--could be borne with humility.  
  
Dante was a man grown, not a child-- and not a man like himself, either, with decades lost to the lash. Daunted by this disparity, Vergil had given up the chase to await Dante's approach instead. But although he would often meet his sword in battle--skittish sometimes or, even worse, "fatigued"--Dante would not meet his eyes.  
  
But perhaps angels smile upon even devils in the pits of hell, if only for a laugh and a lark, because one morning, from one such pit, a scouts-spore emerged. It belonged to the Underworld's wildly diverse kingdom of fungi and had no true form, only an enduring will ever in search of better company.  
  
Vergil failed to decline its very physical and aggressive community invite, thinking--rapidly, _remembering_ \--that as the Black Knight he, too, had been nothing-- because he was everything. He was Mundus, who was the Earth entire, and each will woven into his electric empire never lacked for dreams, or ambitions, or even nightmares. But none but Mundus could define such experiences, because none but Mundus had power enough to judge them.  
  
That was why, when he fell and Mundus first struck him, Vergil had seen his shoulder dislocated but felt only his mother tickling a washcloth over the area, before she saw to his bawling, soap-blinded little brother. Naturally, both with Dante then and Mundus before, he had laughed.  
  
The encounter with the scout had catalyzed an argument when Vergil came to tasting his brother's blood, his sin-horns spluttering and his piney tail bottle-brushed.  
  
Even now, in a well-lit place, with an erection the size of god and the perfect cup of tea, he recalls in full color the scout's demise: charred almost to pure carbon, some tissue still rambling its species' piercing but monotonal cry of distress-- its greasy reek just a touch _umami_ , he notes in retrospect.  
  
He's amused now, too, to recall his brother sin-triggered and badly singed by Vergil's bolts, but fanning his full fury at an adversary that was then less daunting than burnt toast.  
  
 _There's no need,_ Vergil had said, surprised to find he could barely speak, _to go to such extremes.  
  
_ _No need,_ Dante hissed. _Huh._ _How about next time I just ask it nicely what it needs from you. Draw up a fair contract, for salaried labor.  
  
_ _Even if you swam in red ink,_ Vergil sneered, hoarse as hay, _and sat on canvas, you couldn't draft your own ass.  
  
_ It had been a decent brawl, at first. When Vergil pinned Dante he cursed his own blunder, for his brother's devil--with its knuckly wing-hooks and rough, offensive armor--was a born grappler. But he might still keep his advantage, he mused, provided that he--  
  
Dante bit him--so gently, with those needles--then nibbled at his plate to confirm each vital point intact. Bit by bit, it seemed, his brother restored to him his own body-- the carmine and luminous thing beneath his run-renegade defenses. But Vergil was himself undone.  
  
And as Vergil asked then, Dante asks now:  
  
"What do you need?"  
  
It had taken some time to know. The man whose need for power is shown to be no need at all, but a child's desire, certainly has his work cut out. Vergil understood desire but, newly exposed, his own had been resistant to its new order. Where did he even begin? Would another bestial coupling even satisfy him? Satisfy _Dante_?  
  
 _An unbred animal will not **die**_ \--he remembered one lieutenant shrugging; all practicality, no malice-- _but they're easier to ride once they've been ridden.  
  
_ It had taken some time to forget. Vergil finds it all much easier with tea, far away from there. Who would have predicted he'd be the first to cry uncle in the Underworld? It amuses him now, but back then, it was yet another threat to the awful and unflinching resilience he'd practiced for survival.  
  
He can answer Dante better now, at least:  
  
"Only what you can give me." Vergil grinds down anyway, because it pleases them both. "Though I'd like to hear you play, first."  
  
"Sure," Dante rasps.  
  
But he lags and, when Vergil sits up slow against him, Dante's fingertips drag back and down. Vergil's head drops to his chest as his brother's hands wander. There's a bit of stubble to his kisses, but they remain light to prevent much burn.  
  
Vergil had been mortified to discover it wasn't really kink that did it for him, but the gentleness with which Dante had tempered his own power and ferocity; how he'd fallen abruptly out of his trigger in the Underworld, panicked and raw under Vergil's talons, and panted, _S'fine like this, right? Or d'you need me to be, uh--  
  
_ Dante nibbles up near the hickey Vergil has been tuning to a fine color, for exactly this purpose, but still he barely staunches his reaction. **_Yes_** , he thinks with a pulse, so wiled he forgets to finish qualifying himself to-- to himself.  
  
"It's been a while, so don't be too, heh, _hard_ on me," Dante teases, before scrambling off the sofa to retrieve his guitar and escape a well aimed elbow.  
  
"It's only fair to subject you to the same. Force and trade in equal measure."  
  
"Oh? That right, sugar? I got something you want so bad, you'd steal it _and_ buy it off me?"  
  
"Sure as shootin'," Vergil deadpans, with such atrocious accent Dante fumbles the double-necked acoustic on his return. Vergil takes his tea from the stand and sips. "Then I would return it, to demonstrate my thanks." He smirks at Dante over the rim. "How I liked it well enough to do it again and again, until you were glad to make it a gift instead."  
  
"Hush your mouth," Dante grins, eartips hot. "You have any idea how hard it is to play with a boner?"  
  
"Of course." Vergil stirs in his next words as primly as he stirs his tea. "I've been practicing for several weeks."  
  
Dante bursts into laughter, and Vergil tries not too preen too obviously. "Maybe I noticed."  
  
"Perhaps I did, too."  
  
Dante beams, and it's Vergil's turn to have hiccups of the heart. How to describe the alchemies of love and lust, across time? A ballet of contrasts, exhilarating and exhausting; upholding and-- diffusing, like the cup and the tea. He swallows, recalling with an ache his little brother innocent and selfish and-- and smiling, just like this.  
  
"So," Dante clears his throat then peels back to the guitar. "Needs tuning, but she's always a little tricky."  
  
"A Devil Arm?"  
  
"Nah, just the model. Doublenecks have more strings-- more tunes equals more tuning. The sound is something special, though, it kinda shakes and makes me think of-- well, I'll just show you."  
  
A few tweaks more then the strings really do shimmer, like sun on water; gold becoming silver at the height of its intensity. Vergil shuts his eyes against it, transported. _An afternoon in early spring, clover crushed and fragrant with their blood, and all of nature refining her purpose through her many tiny industries.  
  
_ As a boy, Dante had slept like a dog after practice and, if Vergil worked smarter to outpace him, not harder, he could sometimes win a great deal more reading time. Presently, he finds himself charmed both by the intersections and the diversions of their childhood.  
  
When Dante reclaims his composition, it slips from Vergil's fingers like a caress. He blinks and Dante is looking away, half-smiling. It's not deliberately coy but, Vergil thinks, it is all the more alluring for that. He accepts the more animal fantasies the sight conjures, warmed more by the tenderness that nips at its heels. If Dante is-- looking away, or down, or at nothing, it _must_ be good and he _must_ be-- safe, to feel how good it is; without seeing.  
  
Vergil and his devil were once perplexed by these dual instincts--one the carer's, the other the conqueror's--and Yamato had been too hard a teacher for subtlety. But the more he read, stoking his passions at times--most memorably during puberty--higher than his ambitions, the more curious his devil became until it, too, was at last elevated by human tenderness. Without it, power was neither enduring nor compelling.  
  
There was a difference between kings and tyrants, one rarely understood among even mortal men. Vergil saw it in flashes, like the storm approaching, but he'd not been ready to meet it in the dark.  
  
Now, when he wants his brother's body, he wants it like a king wants-- not to rule, but to serve. But he has no interest in politics; better to be a lover, a god great though secret, than the symbol of some blandly universal power.  
  
"Shall I hold it for you?"  
  
"What for?"  
  
"So you can play."  
  
"Oh," Dante chuckles. "No, I'll just-- I'll get distracted."  
  
"If you like."  
  
"I _do_ like, but I _can't_ while I'm--"  
  
"How do you expect to perform without my help?"  
  
"...Pin it to your forehead."  
  
Vergil laughs. "Don't sulk." He takes back the composition, with lingering fingers. "I won't watch, provided you extend me the same courtesy. Fair?"  
  
"Fine, whatever"--it is a very silly argument--"but don't get your hopes up, I'm--"  
  
"Dante."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You cannot disappoint me in this, even if we save it for a rainy day. The next book I take from those shelves will remind me more of you. I'll enjoy relearning the words you found worthy of music."  
  
Vergil watches the startled shadows chase over Dante's face, like birds over fish under water. He also recognizes-- stiffness, as if from an ache too long ignored and clumsily nudged, and tries not to be too disappointed; as he promised.  
  
Intimacy wasn't easy--a misfire was, at best, rude--but sometimes he feels so much more cold and crooked than he thinks a man should. Sometimes, he forgets to wonder about himself and his instincts; whether he might still be off after even these many happy months together.  
  
"...Raincheck?"  
  
Dante reaches over and up--and past the note--and Vergil almost startles into his kiss.  
  
The guitar dings between them.  
  
"No," Dante breathes. "Won't make you wait."  
  
"Well--" Dante kisses him again, and the thought is slow to rally. "You can't rush genius." ...That wasn't it. "Art."  
  
"Oh, that's all done. Just waiting on me, now."  
  
"'At the end is freedom. Until then, patience.'"  
  
"Sure." Dante's smile is light and a little sad, but his eyes are very dark. "I like a little of that."  
  
Untouched, the guitar swoons dramatically. Vergil arrests its fall, then passes it pointedly to its owner. A number of bright remarks announce themselves, but the loudest is simple in its sincerity.  
  
"Nothing pleases me more than to be expecting you-- except, perhaps, to meet you in the end."  
  
"Really? Even when I interrupt you, being a huge nerd?"  
  
"You could hardly interrupt that, dear brother. I'm well established. But I always _expect_ you--"  
  
"Well, I _do_ live here--"  
  
"--because I prefer to take my pleasures in your company."  
  
When he first made love to Dante, it was with the unspoken vow to be only tender; without the violence required for plausible deniability. He had given the book to Nero, after all, having outgrown its veiled language and his own reliance on symbols. Vergil intuited that his dearest wishes, the ones V had so plainly expressed, could not be far removed from Dante's own, and he'd tasked himself to meet them in love.  
  
Though he'd balked at Vergil's handling, Dante had come apart pleading and let himself be caught trembling at his peak. The intimacy had frightened Vergil, too, at first. He had not expected-- his brother's cries, his pain, and moreover his terrifying addiction to that pain; how he'd made it both sword and shield, to challenge all the world if it failed against Vergil's more literary defenses.  
  
How foolish they'd both been-- speaking without thinking, thinking without speaking; with all the bruises in between.  
  
Without fail, this memory also ignites in him a flame of devotion that is not quite vicious-- but could be, if required. His devil tends to prowl, too, ready to defend its twin from imaginary slings and arrows-- or simply to groom it to sleep, as often as its mark intercepted it to lavish the same treatment.  
  
"You know," Dante's brows are up, but so is his color. "You're a pretty smooth talker when you want something."  
  
"Oh?" Vergil smirks, delighted by how well he's taken to earnest self-expression and Dante's typical fluster. But a little somber, too, because he remembers their fights, recent and not, and that as children Dante was heart-sleeved before he was stone-eyed; not quite at all like Vergil but enough, superficially, to unsettle. When Dante's hidden self emerges, Vergil feels as if he is seeing a secret season.  
  
It's humbling to imagine that Dante might have had the same feelings for him, once upon a time. He hopes he does, still, and softens his smirk.  
  
"There's not much I want for, these days."  
  
"Everyone's a poet in love, huh," Dante sighs. "Alright, you got me." He chuckles and rocks the tension from his shoulders. "Just gotta run through some scales, first."  
  
"Very well." Vergil averts his gaze smilingly, as agreed.  
  
But when Dante's baritone ascends, crooning coarsely over the strings, Vergil realizes that this is also a vocal performance. He hasn't heard his brother sing since they were boys, huddled around the piano for practice and with Dante insisting he be carried-- in order to better reach the high notes. If he didn't get his way, he'd stand on tiptoe and _shrill_. Dante could match pitch easily, but his pouts soured their tone.  
  
Vergil thinks of when he'd last carried his brother; and of the woman, Mary-Ann, who'd cast her words like stones before she'd left him to turn them over: _You're the one who doesn't understand. Dante **wants** you to hurt him-- that's why his healing is fucked up. _... _He even tried to get me to to do it-- for you. Because of you._ Her coldness then had far exceeded his own. _Dante doesn't think. But **you** do. He'll make it easy for you. You have to deal with that, if you-- if you really do care about him.  
  
_He had only appreciated her advice in hindsight when, one morning as he'd sat at the fountain feeding the pigeons, one had stumbled, confused but still cooing, while its fellows mobbed and pecked. They had been offended by its eye, bloodied and blind. And somehow, because of the bird, he'd realized Dante never missed an opportunity to show his throat, to protest prep and other accommodations for sex, to finish before him so Vergil's aftercare seemed more immediate; to-- to cry out in that way he abruptly understood was not desperate for relief, but in fact despairing of it.  
  
That night--and every night after, he decided, until pleasure separated itself from pain--Vergil had coaxed Dante from hot talk to heavier discussion. As with most things, it had proved rough but rewarding-- like, he notes, amused by his own sentimentality, Dante's mature voice. The color is rich and raspy, and reminds him of brown sugar in strong black tea; of the throat warming the breath, the tongue sculpting beauty from the essence of vitality. He predicts Dante will sing Spanish as well as he's ever spoken it.  
  
The guitar arrives more slowly and shyly than expected, dutifully layering its honeys before it announces the vocalist with a prolonged throb:  
  
" _Gracias, violines,_ " Dante pulls each word to set it spinning, " _por este día, de cuatro cuerdas. Puro_ "--the word beats steady and unbroken, past the poem's punctuation and into its next line--" _es el sonido_ "--only to waver, as if enfeebled by itself; the too-tender clarity of its hope--" _del cielo_ "--a quiet breath--" _la voz azúl, del a-i-re_."  
  
The tempo livens, emboldened by Neruda's confession. Vergil can't help noticing that, in addition to its own, Dante's guitar is performing the part of another, finer instrument; sawing-sweet as shearwaters. The piece is choppy because it's actually a duet, and when Dante's voice ascends again, higher, Vergil recognizes the difficult shift to tenor-- _his_ range--for the last stanza.  
  
He listens, swallowing around a hot stab of something--the blind, noisome pigeon at the fountain intruding--until the guitar crests and skips smartly to a stop. In his mind's eye, an eight-year-old Dante looks back to be sure he's still following.  
  
Vergil blinks rapidly, unconfident in his composure. Nevertheless, he turns to cup his brother's cheek.  
  
"Too much?" Dante's smiling, nervous but proud.  
  
"You do--" Vergil clears his throat. "Too much for me."  
  
Dante doesn't quite stopper the blot of his shock. It spiders inward--livid, loathing--before he shakes its web, habitually and serenely, off. "Well, I want to. Makes me happy." He scrubs his scruff against the heel of his brother's hand, then stops. "...You're not smiling, though."  
  
"I am trying," Vergil says, with a sweetness so dry it's practically arid, "not to cry." He laughs at Dante's gobsmacked but clarified expression. "When did you write this?"  
  
"Just, uh," Dante looks left. "A little after I met Nero. And gave him the Yamato."  
  
Vergil's thumb glides along the bony cradle of Dante's eye. _A beloved border._ He won't cry, but it soothes him to soothe the same places, the same aches, in his twin. "Next week, I might practice this piece instead. It suits me."  
  
Dante closes his eyes, more relieved and about more than he thinks he's really, fully aware. "Good." His heart turns-- unmusical, losing its rhythm. "That's good."  
  
 _Good; and better._ Vergil imagines-- the full moon stirring the tide; the dark waters, inspired, showing their starry compliments. The games he and Dante played were no different, and Vergil kept score only to count his blessings.  
  
"It's late."  
  
"Devil May Care," Dante yawns.  
  
"A nightcap, then?"  
  
"Oh yeah, I'll just lie back and let you work your magic." Dante looks wolfish, but tames readily under Vergil's touch. "...Plenty of time, right?"  
  
There are times, Vergil thinks, that love is as solemn and abiding as death. More, even, for him. ...Perhaps he misspoke, back then. He might never not want this; and more of it. And yet, curiously, it's this very doubt which somehow makes it--all of it; all the losses leading to this sustained triumph, all the black gorges brimming with the echo of absolution--enough; and more than enough.


End file.
